


Not the Destination

by romanticalgirl



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-25
Updated: 2010-03-25
Packaged: 2017-10-23 11:29:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/249822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pay no attention to the man in front of the curtain</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not the Destination

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I'm slightly irrational about the whole Pete vs. Patrick thing in the media, and I'm sure they're all super good friends and love each other very much. I also started this before Pete made his blog entry and I thought that his response would make my heart stop hurting and make me stop wanting to give him cookies, but that did not happen. So I wrote this. Sorry, [](http://inlovewithnight.livejournal.com/profile)[**inlovewithnight**](http://inlovewithnight.livejournal.com/). Please don't hate me.

  
Pete tells himself not to look. He doesn’t need MTV or anyone else to tell him how talented Patrick is. Not to mention how much he doesn’t need to see the past painful months summarized for more column inches. He’s fairly certain that he can happily live out the rest of his natural, unnatural, supernatural, robotic, wasted and game of life without ever hearing the words break and hiatus again. Even discussing the lack of new TV for the summer – even though his TV viewing is mostly limited to Spongebob and Yo Gabba Gabba these days – makes him twitch.

He doesn’t remember whose idea it was anymore (not true: he remembers the day he looked up from a picture of Bronx that Ashlee had sent him and said ‘What do you guys think about…” What he can’t remember is if it’s the wise or the damned who are doomed to always remember their mistakes in vivid detail), but it doesn’t matter who first said the words. They all agreed, they all needed to breathe different air, say someone else’s words, be someone other than each other for a while. What they forgot – or ignored or pretended or just didn’t realize in the first place – was that they were the eye of a media storm of their own making, victims of the culture they helped create – seemingly all-access and entitled ownership of their lives, private and public.

They also forgot – no, never forgot. Maybe they just hoped that it wouldn’t be like always, that it wouldn’t be Pete bearing the brunt of it. Of course, his reputation demanded it: attention whore and media savvy, vocal and emotionally volatile. He would take the flak, take the blame. Though it hurt - more than he liked to admit - how easy it was for everyone to place the blame on him. But still, no matter what happened or what changed, Patrick was Patrick, and Pete’s feelings about Patrick were clear. Patrick is like a sibling. Pete can insult the hell out of him, but he’d rampage if anyone else did. No harsher critic. No stauncher supporter.

Which is why, Pete knew, Patrick asked him not to support him at all. No media support. No leaks. No not-so-cryptic Twitter messages. None of what Pete did best. None of what Pete did at _all_.

The problem with that though, is that Pete hasn’t ever been good at static, at silence. He’s also never been very good at leaving sleeping dogs alone. Not that the dogs are sleeping. He’s got a good thousand-plus at replies on Twitter asking him what’s going on, what do they mean, what’s going to happen to Fall Out Boy, what is Patrick doing, why are Andy and Joe in other bands. He’s the unofficial voice, the front man for their dissolution, and the part that’s funny – would be funny, if any of it were – is that he doesn’t know any of the fucking answers either.

Eventually though, Patrick makes his announcement, and then things really go off the rails. No one can just be happy or excited – or maybe people can and he can only hear the ones who are upset and angry and hurt and betrayed or maybe he’s just feeling that way – and think that it’s good, that they’re stretching their wings, that they’re figuring out what they are and what they aren’t and where to go next. That’s what he tells himself, and when he says he can’t imagine playing in Fall Out Boy again, it’s because Fall Out Boy won’t be the same when they go back to it – he can’t say if, won’t say if – because they’ll be different, they’ll be new people, different people. They’re already different in a million little ways just from the few short months they’ve been apart. He’s trying to grow up. Patrick has slimmed down. Joe’s cleaned up and Andy’s…Andy’s pretty much perfect as he is, so Pete can’t imagine how he’d change.

Or maybe they’ve changed so much at the Fall Out Boy skin can’t ever fit again. Maybe the name and the music means something else, and his legacy will be “Sugar We’re Going Down” on _American Idol_. Maybe it is over and they’re all just pretending it’s not because they don’t know how to do anything else. Or maybe he’s the only one it matters to. They’ll always be friends. There’s no choice after everything they’ve been through – if they’re not friends, they’re enemies, and he’s relatively certain that, no matter how many times he and Patrick have screamed that they hate each other, they’re certainly not enemies. But maybe they’re not a band anymore.

Pete’s been in a lot of bands. Bands come and go. That’s the nature of the business, the nature of the beast. And some bands come and go and come back again. It could be like that for him, for them. Solo artists and outside projects and falling apart and coming back together, stronger and better and recharged. That’s how it works or at least how it’s supposed to.

So he figures he’ll hang on to that through the videos and the albums and the tours, through the ‘what ever happened to…?’ and ‘where are they now…?’. He can survive the ‘why did Stump ever need him’ and ‘what were they all doing wasting their time in Fall Out Boy’. He’ll let them believe he’s a talentless hack, a master of self-promotion and hype, nothing more than the man in front of the curtain, all smoke and flames and nothing inside. The machine of his own destruction.

Maybe he’ll have the last laugh. Maybe it’ll start being funny. Or maybe it won’t. And maybe, just maybe, he’ll follow the advice he’s been giving to everyone all along the way. They made something amazing and they all got to be part of it. Maybe the journey was enough. Maybe the journey’s all you get.  



End file.
